Archive for August, 2007

August 30th, 2007 Comments Off on A Grammar of Modern Indo-European (Printed Edition) – First 200 copies prepared to be freely redistributed

We have received the first 200 books, and we will start sending them to different libraries tomorrow. The editor Imcrea Editorial has worked a press release to be distributed among journalists, which we reproduce here:

Report (revised automatic translation):

In order to understand each other, the 27 EU member states have to trust the biggest translation service of the world: more than 4,000 people work in the corridors of Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg. Around them circulate the Spanish-Pole interpreter, the Spanish-Danish, Spanish-Finnish, Finnish-Estonian, Finnish-Bulgarian, Bulgarian-Maltese”¦ And so on until completing the 506 possible translation pairs that are necessary to have 23 official languages translated into each other. Not even the UN, with six working languages, wins in multilingualism.

All this distilled communication system bears an equally scandalous cost. The most recent data, of 2005, speak of 1,123 million euros invested in translations and interpreters throughout that year, which makes up 1% of the total budget of the EU, 2.28 euros per capita. Speaking in English, one of each 100 euros that leave the European box is used so that the 27 can understand each other. Whenever a language is added, the EU must add to the set of translations 25 million euros more.

Except for Finland, Hungary and Estonia [about 17 million inhabitants], the rest of Europeans, 97% of the population, have been speaking some language derived from Indo-European, a reconstructed language spoken 4,000 years ago in Europe and Asia. So why not recover this mother language, culturally neutral and common to all?

If some measures are not carried out, English, that has become the de facto lingua franca of the EU, will continue to prevail through the use of the argument of its world-wide weight. The Swiss François Grin, specialist in Linguistic Economy, published in 2005 a report which emphasized that Great Britain, thanks to the predominance of its language, gained between 17,000 and 18,000 millions euros annually because of the need of the other member states to learn English.

The Dnghu (‘Language’) Association is an international, non-profit organization located in Europe, whose main mission is to promote the Indo-European language and culture. Its primary concerns today are developing the Modern Indo-European Grammatical System, to bring the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language to its full potential, and teaching it as a second language for all European Union citizens. Our long-term objectives are the adoption of Modern Indo-European by the European Union as its main official language, as well as the use of Indo-European as the main international auxiliary language, to overcome present-day communication barriers, derived from the cultural implications that arise from the use of English as lingua franca.

The Dnghu Association is financed by a private Spanish education company, Biblos, and its work is supported by Extremadura University professors. The regional Government of Extremadura and other public economic agents have also supported the Dnghu projects’ present and future implementation.

After creation of group, the presentation of the project and the legal incorporation of the Association, the last hit in our task to revive Proto-Indo-European is the publication of “A Grammar of Modern Indo-European” (at the moment only available in English), which tries to agglutinate in a single volume all the knowledge acquired in the last two centuries of Indo-European studies, and to provide at the same time an appropriate writing system and updated vocabulary to the modern needs of the language speakers. In order to enable a quick distribution of the book – and thus also the learning of the language – the Association has published it under free licenses, so that anyone can copy, publish and redistribute it freely; in addition, almost all the units printed will be dedicated to free donations to different European libraries.

After the last weeks of holydays, some Dnghu members are back to work. We are all, however, engaged in different activities in the University – Doctorate, Exams, Academy (private) lessons for the exams, and language courses.

Recent matters to be solved at DNGHU before the beginning of this academic course:

– The decision on the public subsidies for the project of teaching European languages are due for September after informal reports, even though no date has been fixed. Even if we don’t receive the public approval, we have made some agreements with private schools to teach this experimental subject in the 2007-2008 course, instead of Latin or ‘Classical Studies’.
– We haven’t accomplished some of our ToDos for 2006-2007, like the PodCast in Indo-European, the news’ website, the renewal of Dnghu’s site (and its correct translation into Modern Indo-European), and many other little projects. We hope to get all this done before Christmas.
– Some domain names haven’t been renewed by our provider while we were on holydays, in the last 20 days; we hope this will be solved in the next days without further problems. Sorry for the inconveniences to all of you Wiki editors.
– The printed copies of our Indo-European Grammar were supposed to be available on 20th August; there was a problem in the output (it was not a “Distiller” document, as the printer wanted, but “only Acrobat”…), so we might have to wait a little more time till Editor and Printer agree on the final price. In any possible case, we hope to have most of the 200 copies sent to different European libraries by the end of October.
– Apparently, some spammers are using our domain wlqo.com and others to send thousands of emails; many anti-spam software out there (stupidly) answer automatically to the spammer email’s address, and we’ve got hundreds of spam warnings a day, so we have to delete thousand of mails. So the spammed servers are ironically spamming us… We will try to read any possible mail, but please share any information in the forum instead, just in case we mistakenly delete(d) your email.
– We want to have a site for links on linguistics, where every possible free online resource is listed or downloadable, so that every visitor can learn the (Proto-)Indo-European reconstruction – and Proto-Language/Nostratic, Indo-Uralic as well as Indo-European early dialects and proto-languages. If you know good websites, post them in the Forum, so that our work is more easily done.
– We will probably open a period for easy membership to our association, so that every interested individual or organization is able to participate in future decisions and elections.